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Subject: Agenda and Parliamentary Procedure for the FTF meeting
All, Robert's rules of order impose some constraints on the way a meeting may be run, and how it may consider and dispose of documents. In order to be most productive, we need to use Robert's rules to do the things they were intended to do. Specifically, we need to use Robert's rules to record areas where we have reached consensus, and to refer things we don't have consensus about back to committees for more work and recommendations. I don't want to go into parliamentary procedure in too much theoretical detail here. However, a few points are in order (no pun intended). First, parliamentary procedure strictly limits the kind of things we can talk about. We can basically consider two kinds of things: the report of a subcommittee, or a motion from a member of the full committee to take some action. To the greatest extent possible, I hope we can work by acting on the recommendations of subcommittees, since these are the forums in which we do most of our (offline and telecon) work. If we feel something serious is missing and needs to be dealt with immediately, or if there's a point of procedure or other constraint on our operations we wish to make which we don't want to have reflected in the final document, then we can deal with it as a motion from the floor. When considering a subcommittee's recommended text, we need to carefully avoid simply voting down a motion to adopt the text which a subcommittee has produced. Doing this would have a couple of bad effects: (i) it would cause us to lose the benefits of the debates we've already had online and the ones we'll have at the FTF, and (ii) at least formally, it would require the subcommittees to start over from scratch on the sections they've worked on. It might actually formally end the work of the subcomittee and force us to constitute a new subcommittee. Therefore, instead of voting against adoption of a subcommittee's report if we feel it isn't finished or needs to be fixed, we should make a motion to REFER the matter back to the subcommittee for more work, probably with specific instructions about what we want done. The motion to Refer takes precedence over both the main motion (i.e. the one to adopt the subcommittee's report) and any amendments to the main motion, so we can use it to send the subsection back to the subcomittee as soon as we feel we've stopped making progress in the FTF, while still preserving the progress we HAVE made in the body of the amended document and in the instructions to the subcommittee. With these points in mind, here's how I imagine the meeting will go: 1. Call to order 2. Roll call to determine quorum (the remainder of this assumes we pass the quorum requirement) 3. Motion (and vote) to approve the minutes of the previous meeting (as a personal aside, I have no idea what happens if this motion fails -- I've never seen it fail. If anyone knows, I'd be happy to learn this.) 4. Motion (and vote) to approve the agenda for this meeting 5. Motion to adopt Bob's recommended outline as the outline for our final specification 5a. Motions to Amend this motion; debate and vote on each amendment 5b. Vote on the motion to adopt, OR Motion to Commit the outline to a new subcomittee (one of these votes should PASS!) 6. Motion to adopt the recommendation of the use cases and requirements subcommittee as the use cases and requirements subsection of our final specification 6a. Motions to Amend this motion (these should take the form of amendments recommending specific changes to the text of the use cases and requirements document, especially amendments recommending inclusion or exclusion of specific content) 6ai. Debate and vote on each amendment 6b. Motion to Refer the document back to the use cases and requirements subcomittee 6bi. Debate on the instructions to the subcommittee 6bii. Vote on the motion to refer (this motion should PASS!) 7. Motion to adopt the recommendation of the core assertions subcommittee as the core assertions subsection of our final specification 7a. 7ai. 7b. (All same as in section 6) 7bi. 7bii. 8. Motion to adopt the recommendation of the protocols subcommittee as the protocols subsection of our final specification 8a. 8ai. 8b. (All same as in section 6) 8bi. 8bii. 9. Motion to adopt the recommendation of the core assertions subcommittee as the core assertions subsection of our final specification 9a. 9ai. 9b. (All same as in section 6) 9bi. 9bii. 10. Call for new business 11. Motion to adjourn If we all agree that this is how things should happen, then the following agenda should be followed (with two omissions not relevant to our first FTF, this is the standard Roberts' agenda for a meeting). Motions from the floor would be taken during the "New Business" segment: 1. Call to Order 2. Reading and approval of minutes of past meeting 3. Reading and approval of agenda 4. Reports of standing subcommittees 5. New Business --bob Bob Blakley Chief Scientist Enterprise Solutions Unit Tivoli Systems, Inc. (an IBM Company)
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